Last week, we kicked off our review of 2016 with the ever-exciting position of catcher. Somehow, we accidentally tagged Roberto Perez with a negative $8.10 price. That was supposed to be a positive $81. At least, that’s the case for your weird postseason fantasy league. Where did you even find a postseason league?

Today, let’s shift over to the cold corner for some real actually interesting players. If you missed the first post in this series, I recommend giving it a quick skim. It has notes on methodological changes between this season and last. You can also go straight into the calculator to tweak values for your league.

For these articles, I’m going to assume a 12 team, 5×5, standard deep roster with a pitching cap of 1475 innings (most leagues are 1450 or 1500, I split the difference). I set the batter split at 65% because that produces what I consider to be the most realistic position adjustments.

Here we go…

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Yesterday, I reviewed my 2015 hitter xBABIP underachievers and the results were fantastic. Today, I’m going to review the flip side, the 2015 hitter xBABIP overachievers. Let’s see how this group performed.

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Well, it wouldn’t be much fun if the ball just rolled to the wall every time the pitcher threw it, so obviously the game needs a catcher, even if robot umps take over. But my impression of trying to draft stud catchers from year to year is that it’s folly.

Maybe because the position is so demanding defensively, my impression of their ability to hit is somewhere between ‘American League pitcher’ and ‘Defensive Replacement’. The numbers say that catchers debut later, but even that finding is muddied by late-career backup catcher debuts. Aging for catchers seems about the same, and finding value in a catcher is easy even if they hit 13% worse than league average as a group this year, worse than any other position players — you still need to fill the position, so even an okay batter should be valuable.

Still… am I crazy? It seems that catchers are more volatile, year to year, and I just want to shop in the bargain bin for the most part. Let’s jump in and see if I am loony tunes.

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Gary Sanchez wasn’t the most valuable catcher in 2016. He earned his owners just $8.60 per the FanGraphs Auction Calculator. He also posted a ludicrous .299/.379/.657 line with 20 home runs 34 runs and 42 RBI in just 229 plate appearances. Obviously, the late start limited his earning potential. If we extrapolate over 600 plate appearances, a fair expectation for a healthy Sanchez, he was on pace for 52 home runs, 89 runs, and 110 RBI. That’s comparable to a more powerful Nelson Cruz, and he was on the fringes of the top 10 fantasy hitters this year.

Sanchez wasn’t just magnificent among catchers, he was comparable to a top 10 talent for one-third of a season. Now what do we do?

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**To avoid confusion, yes this is supposed to read 2015. It’s a recap of my preseason article that discussed the 2015 xBABIP underachievers.

Today I continue to work my way through my preseason article recaps, this time focusing on xBABIP, the equation that the intelligent and very handsome Alex Chamberlain brewed up. We’ll start with the biggest underachievers from 2015. Let’s see how they performed this season.

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2016 was an odd year for catchers in fantasy baseball. Something that caught my eye was the ownership rates of the top-ranked catchers. Only two catcher-eligible players — Jonathan Lucroy and Buster Posey — ended the season above 90% ownership in Yahoo leagues. Gary Sanchez got close (87%, with those other 13% likely being dead leagues), as did Salvador Perez (also 87%), and Wilson Ramos was in the 80+% range for a while as well, before he was widely dropped following his late-season injury.

Regardless of the reasoning, the fact that only the top two catchers were owned in >90% of leagues is significant, seeing as shortstop was the position with the second-fewest >90% owned players, with seven. The weirdest aspect of this is that 2016 was a good year for catchers in fantasy; so good, perhaps, that it was too deep for some smaller one-catcher leagues.

While it’s worth noting that Rotographs is using an updated auction calculator this year, it’s plainly clear how much more productive the position was this year compared to 2015. Last year, just one player earned his fantasy owners more than $20 worth of production, and that was Buster Posey. This year, Posey was joined by Lucroy and Ramos above the $20 threshold. Furthermore, the value of this year’s No. 10 catcher — Brian McCann at $10.20 — makes it even wackier that A.J. Pierzynski was the No. 10 fantasy catcher last year, with a whopping $3.42 value.

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When I started this series which attempts to determine the projected fantasy value for prospects, I knew today’s step would be the hardest. The issue was converting various pitch grades (and control) into a workable framework for a pitcher’s overall production value. I thought I may not end up with a workable answer, but the following results have promise beyond just grading pitches.

I was able to piece together work from various articles and gave each pitch a grade based on the ERA scale. Combining per-pitch-ERA’s with a control value, it looks like we can estimate a pitcher’s overall value.

A pitching prospect is usually given a value on each of their pitches and a command and/or control grade. For example, the MLB.com’s grades for their top rated pitcher, Lucas Giolito, are:

Pitch: Grade
Fastball: 80
Curveball: 70
Changeup: 55
Control: 55

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Welcome to the annual series that provides both a review of your favorite teams’ 2016 season, as well as a early look toward 2017. It also serves as a helpful guide for keeper and dynasty leagues.

The Graduate: Chris Devenski (RHP): The Astors saw a wave of high-ceiling, young talent reach the Majors in 2016 including Alex Bregman, A.J. Reed, Michael Feliz and Joe Musgrove but it was the under-appreciated Devenski that arguably had the biggest impact on the big league club with a whopping 2.8 WAR accumulated from (mostly) the bullpen. Devenski, 25, isn’t overpowering but he has strong command/control which makes his average heater play up. And it sets up his plus-plus changeup well. The Astros will no doubt be tempted to try the right-hander in a starting role in 2017 but he appears well suited for the pen and had a 1.61 ERA as a reliever versus 4.01 as a starter (five starts). He also did his best work out of the pen soaking up innings in low leverage situations.

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Fans of the ‘Graphs are probably familiar with our Auction Calculator. It’s an intuitive tool, especially for standard leagues, but there are some quirks. If this is your first time hearing about the calculator, I recommend skimming this tutorial. I’ve also penned an advanced version of the tutorial which includes tips and tricks for converting the auction values to snake draft tiers.

Recently, we added two big updates to the calculator. I also sat down with site owner/dark overlord David Appelman to talk about some of the assumptions made by the calculator and how to get around them. For the remainder of the article, I assume you have some experience with using the auction calculator. If you’re new to the tool, I recommend you familiarize yourself with it before reading on.

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10/23/16

The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is live!

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Leading Off: Question of the Day

• In your opinion, is CLE’s layoff a factor?
  • Layoffs over last 10 years

Notable Transactions/Rumors/Articles/Game Play

Tale of the Tape

• SP
• RP
• Hitting/Bench
• Picks

Stat of the Day: Cubs allowed the 4th-most SBs with just a 22% CS rate (lg. avg. is 29%)

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